>You seem to abhors the fact that homeless people are in the city and not the fact that there are homeless people as a direct result of policy decisions. Homelessness is a solvable problem but building more expensive housing doesn’t solve it, it exacerbates it.

I feel very strongly that a strong middle class is the prerequisite to a strong economy for the city.

My summers in Denver as a child are proof of that.

Building more housing should not increase the cost of living for current residents, and I would love to see a form of rent control implemented to enforce that.

I would also support having mixed-income communities in addition to other affordable housing initiatives like rent-to-own, inclusionary zoning, and home ownership programs.

The city has already dipped our foot in the water for many of these, but future projects ought to prioritize them.

Homelessness as an issue sucks really bad, but it's hard to feel like nothing is being done when the city has recently unveiled it's plans to end homelessness https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/12/op-ed-mayor-ras-baraka-says-newark-must-put-end-to-homelessness/amp/

We can do both of these things at the same time. I think one of the biggest issues we face is the very slow bureaucratic process, but you cannot in good faith read that article and tell me that the city is doing absolutely nothing.

I think your issue is that homeless isn't being prioritized enough and you would rather see all funds go to that // the community as opposed to opening up the door to new markets and new developments.

My biggest issue with that is that a heavy chunk of our residents simply do not have the skillset to be working lots of the high paying jobs downtown offers.

As an aside, is there a barrier for entry, racism, and negative bias against those of us that are able to handle such jobs? Hell yes.

But our citizens right now are closer to security guard worker than to programmer or attorney.

The best way to fix this is to pour money into our youth, Newark Public Schools, so that the next generation of kids are prepared and equipped with these skills.

Our school budget is already over 1 billion dollars, so the resources are already there.

The management of those resources is a different conversation.

All in all, I feel like we can address most, if not all of your concerns without having to gut this project or forego other development.

Now a better question is, what's the likelihood that we'll do such a thing?

What's the likelihood that we'll implement rent control of this project goes forward?

What's the likelihood that we invest our money into tried and true tactics of community development if this project doesn't go through?

Will we take these monies and spend them right, or will we throw our bread at a different development proposal 6 months from now?